


together

by trsh



Category: Shoujo Kakumei Utena | Revolutionary Girl Utena
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-10 16:21:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18663970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trsh/pseuds/trsh
Summary: You always knew you'd eventually move as far away from your past mistakes as you possibly could, to move into a city that would accept you and try to live a new life away from your old problems--but you never would have expected the company you'd end up keeping along the way.Made forABSOLUTE DESTINY POST-APOCALYPSE, the Utena future zine.





	together

**Author's Note:**

> **CW: Misogyny, Mentions of scars, violence and past in-show trauma**

####  **i.**

With your hand gripped tightly to the wrist of the woman in front of you, you shuffle deeper into the screaming crowd. You can barely tell where you are; you’re much too short to look over, though given how many people here look way too menacing for your own good, maybe hiding below is for the best.

“Goddamn parties, of all the times…” She’s muttering under her breath, pulling you through all the noise. “God, I wanna knock these people out.”

“P-please don’t.” You’re already panicking enough as it is. She grips a bit uncomfortably tight for a moment, but calms herself down.

An hour and a half ago, you had left the airport, a long, painful trip to your new home. You were both supposed to take a train to one station, and then take the bus to your new apartment. Then the train station you needed to stop at had technical difficulties. Okay, fine. You went to the station before, and you walked to where you would’ve stopped normally. Problem solved, no more issues.

“You have a hand free?” She takes her phone out and hands it off to you. “I know we’re close, but I don’t know which specific building we’re in. Look it up for me?”

“Why can’t you?”

“I need this hand.” She showcases why, gently nudging a man aside so you can both pass. “Consider it our one means of protection. Shouldn’t lose it.”

The bus didn’t come. And then the  _ next _ bus didn’t come, followed by the backup alternate bus, followed by checking the first bus stop again just to be sure, by which point you bothered to look it up and it turns out that there’s a festival happening which shut down the entire street you live on.

Which means you’re walking home, in the dark, along these sidewalks you’ve never before crossed, surrounded by hundreds of screaming drunks, all of whom outsize you greatly.

Your name is Nanami Kiryuu, and you are absolutely fucking terrified.

“O-okay, three buildings down from here.” You’re trying not to sound as scared as you are. “The red one, there’s a cafe right next to the entrance.”

“Got it.” She tries to quicken the pace.

There’s a lot of men looking at you. They keep saying things. You’re pretty sure none of what’s coming out from them is good, but you’re so far gone from all the overstimulation that you have no idea what most of them are saying.

One of them keeps following you. You don’t like this.

“Helloooo there, pretty lady.”

His hand keeps getting closer to you.

Your nails grip into your friend’s wrist.

“What’re you doing hanging out with that scrawny shit over there?”

Please go away.

“Hey.” His tone’s getting angrier. “Stop getting so clingy with your little guy-pal.”

Please go away, please please please don’t do this.

“What’s wrong? Don’t you want to hang out with a real m–”

She catches his hand before he can touch you.

“Lay one finger on her,” she threatens, eyes glowing with hatred, “And I will fucking end you.”

The man realizes what he got into, and skitters off.

“Asshole.” She looks ready to kill someone, but calms herself down enough to remember where she was going. “Is is the place?”

Red building, cafe up front, entrance right next to it, just like the phone showed. You both hurry through the door, past the lobby, and quickly catch your breath on the stairs, standing between floors.

“Hey, um, Nanami.” The girl with you begins to shake. “Did I… handle that well?”

“About as well as anyone could have.”

“Are you sure?” She’s starting to tear up. You quickly open up your arm in response, and she immediately clings to it.

“Yeah.” You hold her tight, letting her sob into your shoulder. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

Your name is Nanami Kiryuu, and you are terrified. Not just because of this, but because you’re a complete mess of a human being, with no awareness of how to deal with the real world. You’ve been a terrible person for so much of your life, and quite frankly, you don’t deserve anyone to ever get close to you.

“That’s… that’s good.”

And this girl in front of you, of all the people to have stuck by your side for this long, despite everything you’ve done, is Utena Tenjou, the most honest, genuine, selfless woman you’ve ever met in your entire life, trapped in the kind of world to take advantage of that.

You don’t really know what you two are, if you’re real, genuine friends, if you’re long-known acquaintances or just two bitter women seemingly stuck with each other until death, but even then, stuck with each other you both are. You need her–and as strange as it might sound, she might need you, too.

“It’s okay. You did good, alright?”

 

####  **ii.**

When you ran away from Ohtori Academy, you didn’t really know what you should do next; you had a plan for getting out with as many things to sell off as you could hold in a few bags, but there was a part of you that never actually expected to go through with it, much less successfully execute it without someone catching you. For the walk out of Ohtori, and the town surrounding it, you were ecstatic, for the walk into a different, real town, made out of real buildings instead of metaphors, it was setting in that you never prepared to get this far, and then, when you finally realized that most pawn shops wouldn’t let a small girl sell off large swaths of expensive items for hundreds of thousands of dollars without suspicion, you were completely lost.

You’d only lived a life of luxury up until that point. Suddenly, you were lower than even the proles you’d spend so much time mocking as a child–but luckily for you, they made shelters for those kinds of people.

You had no idea how to do anything, and because you sounded crass and smug to all these strangers working at the shelter, nobody was willing to help you… but then, after all the teenagers started coming back after school, someone you knew waltzed right in.

“Uuuuugh.” Utena just woke up, after you both immediately clonked out upon getting your keys and heading into your new home. “I wanna go outsiiiiide.”

“Not for another hour.” You’ve been up for a few hours, though you probably should have slept some more.

“C’mon, it can’t be so bad.” She’s incredibly antsy from not being able to do a morning run.

“Do you want to spend the rest of the day with a migraine?” You tap your phone, showing a jet lag calculator timing down. “No light. We’re waiting another hour.”

“Bleeeeeh.”

When she walked in that day, though, you didn’t even catch on that it was her until someone called her name. Gone was her ignorant smiles of innocence, all happy and positive, and in its place was an aura of power potent enough to where most people were terrified of her. Cuts and bruises all over her from head to toe, like she had just fought a small gang within the past hour, and a grimace strong enough to the point that you were surprised her jaw didn’t implode from all the pressure.

Of everyone in that shelter, of all the workers and volunteers and kids, you were the only one to have ever asked what even happened to her–and she seemed to have hundreds of stories on hand to explain to you with.

There’s a pattern in them that goes a bit like this: she’d stumble upon someone being bullied, and she’d try to stop it. The bullies try to taunt her, and then at some point…  _ something _ happens. It always seemed to be small and meaningless, but you know she exploded in response to it, because even trying to recall it to you would make her tense and angry. Things escalate from there, multiple people hold her back and calm her down, and by the time it’s all done she’s either suspended or expelled from the school.

Her triggers always seemed so unrelated to each other, at first. Why does someone poking you in the ribs cause the exact same reaction as them threatening to kill everyone you love? How are you stoic in the face of a man pulling a knife up to you, but he mentions one thing about playing hero and that’s when you lose all sense of reason?

“Hellooooooo.” Utena’s waving her hand directly in front of your eyes. “You alive in there?”

“Oh, uh, yeah.” You’ve probably been staring off into the distance remembering this stuff, haven’t you. “Just kinda tired, is all.”

“If we’re gonna feel like this anyways, it shouldn’t matter too much if we go out early.” She’s managed to sit herself down next to you, though she’s still doing stretches to get herself moving. “I don’t see the big deal.”

“It’ll be a lot worse than this, trust me.” Honestly, you’re kind of wishing for more than just an extra hour of no sunlight right about now. “We should just try to rest until then.”

While she kept talking about all these fights she got into, you had absolutely no idea what to make of them–and God, if you weren’t so terrified of where you were back then, you probably would have been the exact same condescending, smug piece of shit you always were in response–but terrified you were, so you just kept listening and listening, and by some point there became a mention of how they’d call her the Prince Charming who never saves the princess, and the tense anger she kept holding made into something more desperate, her fists weakly trying to tighten like she was holding onto something for dear life.

She was trying to save people, constantly, yet she didn’t want to be reminded of the fact. She hated being seen as a hero. No, more specific than that–she hated the consequences of failing as a hero.

There was a reason for that, right?

_ Did Anthy do this to you? _

You blurted it out by complete accident, in that completely awkward asshole way you’d always do. You were expecting a violent backlash, the same things she’d do to all those other people who made her remember Anthy, and instead of that, you were met with a hug, tightly wrapped around you. She’d quietly talk about her the same way a widow would talk about their dearly departed, trying to hide all the pain with happy memories, and every way Anthy would act in these stories felt… familiar.

She was the polar opposite of you, you thought, but as Utena kept talking, the more it just seemed like she was a vision of you in an alternate universe, where you never stumbled into learning how to resist the system designed to suck the life out of you, the one where you never got away. Every time she gave an anecdote about her, you seemed to have your own on hand that could almost repeat it word-for-word.

It wasn’t until her older brother was mentioned that you caught onto why.

“Alright, you’re definitely not just doing that because you’re tired.” She has her hand on your shoulder. “You doing okay?”

“Yes?” You’re confused.

“I mean, like, maybe this room’s just too humid or whatever, but I’m pretty sure people don’t cry when they’re doing fine.”

“I’m crying?” Your fingers run over your face, which is now a mild damp of tears. “Oh. I am.”

“Yeah, you need to stop doing that.” She starts to pat her lap. “Wanna lay down?”

“I-I guess.” God, who are you kidding, of course you do. You quickly lay your head onto her, and she starts stroking your hair to calm you down.

“Keep your eyes closed. I’ll check the clock for us.”

“O-okay.” You’re really bad at admitting that you need this, to yourself or anyone else, but she never seems to mind. That’s something that’d always catch you off guard.

She’s always been this nice, too. You thought she was just being a selfish hero-type whenever she did it at Ohtori, and like, you weren’t exactly  _ wrong _ in some sense, but even then it was misguided, not egotistical. She really did just want to help you, which meant that someone  _ actually just wanted to help you. _ She didn’t do it because you were pretty, or wanted to spend your money or use you as some utility to hold power over and then throw away, she did it because she thought that’s what good people are supposed to do and  _ she wanted to be good. _

You thought you were alone all that time, only in contact with an abusive brother and three friends who ended up always hating you, when a person who wanted to be a genuine, honest-to-god friend was there with you, and because that place screwed your entire perception of reality to shit, you ignored it–and because it screwed her perception, too, she never knew how to handle it. If it wasn’t inadvertently hurting someone else, it was self-destructive, pushing her body’s limits until it broke under all the weight.

It’s not that she wanted to be flawed or selfish. It’s that she wasn’t taught how to be a truly good person. Nobody there was.

“Hey, what did I say?” She caught you with your eyes open, staring at her hand. “Eyes closed, c’mon.”

“When did you get this mark?” You see it close to her wrist, small and kind of curved, but clearly deep. “It looks new.”

“Oh, that.” She seems so calm about it. “Think it came from last night. You held onto me pretty tight with your nails, after all.”

“Oh.” You really should just close your eyes, but you’re too fixated on this. “It hurt, didn’t it?”

“I guess? I dunno, it didn’t really do all that much to me, I’ve had much worse–”

You instinctively hold her arm close to your chest.

“…Nanami.”

“I did this.”

“C’mon, it’s not that bad. It’ll heal in a few days at most.”

“But  _ I did this. _ ”

“But you didn’t mean to, right? And it helped you. I might’ve not noticed that creep otherwise.”

“But–”

“No more buts.” She manages to wriggle her arm free, and holds it away from you until you close your eyes again, which you comply with. “It’s gonna take a lot more than a nail mark for me to stop helping you, y’know.”

God, she’s too nice. You always kept her away because you thought that nobody was that kind without an ulterior motive, but she just wanted to be that kind. Anyone could just be that kind because they think that’s the right thing to do.

You were a lost child who didn’t know how to do a single thing in the real world, and even after all of the things you’ve done, she was still wanting to help you the entire way, helping you learn how to cook and pay for things. The world tried to force her kindness away–and you were complicit in it!–and Jesus Christ, even after being harassed and vilified and stabbed through the god damn back, somehow her selflessness still stood there, unwavered if not still damaged.

If she could still be that good, after all that’s happened to her? Maybe you still have a chance in this world.

 

####  **iii.**

Against all odds, you actually got things accomplished today, being able to get some things for your new apartment. Nothing really fancy, since you should probably save all the really big furniture for a taxi run when you both have a lot of energy, but you were able to get some towels for the shower and a small lamp to light things up without it being too bright.

Mostly, though, you spent a lot of time in a lot of different cafes and restaurants, since Utena wanted to go out and explore the new city she’s in, and you needed a constant supply of tea lest you pass out on the sidewalk, so this seemed like a really good compromise. You were a bit too out of it to really acknowledge much when you weren’t in the comfort of an air-conditioned room with a nice cup of Earl Grey, having to just get Utena to lead you everywhere by hand, but even when she was stuck indoors, Utena seemed calmer than she’d ever been before in her entire life, probably because she isn’t getting weird looks all the time for existing.

Whenever anyone around you in the shelter talked about safe places for anyone to go to, regardless of identity or sexuality, Vancouver was a name that would keep popping up. It seemed like a natural fit for you two, and, at least from the first glance you’re getting here, it worked perfectly; there’s even a cute lil’ queer-centric street, adorned with rainbows all over, with lots of people who seem to be just like you! There’s a cynical part of you that knows this is probably ruled by corporatism more than anything, but given how anywhere near where you used to live had nothing but ratchety old men screaming about mental illnesses the moment anything even mildly disconnected from heterosexuality was even implied, this is basically heaven to you.

It’s now later in the evening, the sun’s just about to come down, and, while you lounge on the porch to your new apartment, you’re trying to get Utena to help you order takeout.

“Is there a ramen place around here?”

“There’s a lot, yeah.” You’re scrolling through a list of them now. A lot of the restaurants you passed mentioned a phone app that can do takeout for you, instead of awkwardly stuttering your order to some poor soul over a phone line. “Want me to go through them?”

“Actually, wait, maybe pho.” Utena’s lazing over the rails, and if you didn’t already know how good her sense of balance is, you would think she was about to fall right over. “There’s probably a few pho places around here.”

“I’d assume thirteen counts as ‘a few’ to you?”

“Wait, really?” She almost trips over herself with how quickly she springs over your shoulder in response, glancing at the full list. “Holy shit, that’s a lot of pho.”

“We live in a city now, Utena.” Admittedly, the sheer quantity of restaurants that exist near you at all is still rather overwhelming to you. “There’s gonna be at least thirteen of basically anything.”

“Is there thirteen Indian restaurants?”

“I thought we were getting pho.”

“Yeah, but what if I wanted Indian?” She’s already right back to stretching over the rails again.

In the sentence “you’re trying to get Utena to help you order takeout”,  _ trying _ would be the key word. She’s not exactly someone who’d you say is well known for her acute decision-making, and now that she’s tired, it’s even worse.

“Alright, Indian it is, then.”

“Okay wait, hang on, I didn’t say I wanted–”

“I’m hungry and we need to order something.” You really want to be stern about this sort of thing. “You need to actually decide on something.”

“Okay okay, fine, can I at least have the phone for a sec?” She holds her hand up, and you give if off to her. “It’ll be faster if I just go through all the options.”

“Right.” You still feel bad whenever you feel like you need to scold her, though. “You… can take your time if you need to.”

“Wait, seriously?”

“I dunno! I feel like I was rude, is all.”

“Eh, you’re justified.” She’s digging through the menu for each restaurant. “Didn’t I spend like ten minutes choosing between coffee sizes today? It’s fine.”

“I guess.” You kinda suck at pushing much of anything, don’t you. “God, I’d be really bad at raising kids.”

“Oh, probably.” She digs right to the bottom of a menu, but one item in particular seems to claw her eyes wide open on reaction to seeing. “Oh oh oh! This one!”

Woah, she actually definitely chose something that quickly. You check what she’s pointing towards.

“Utena, this is…”

“You’ve had it before, right?” She’s unreasonably excited over this. “I’m pretty sure you have, anyway. It’s really tasty, trust me.”

Shaved ice, strawberry flavored. The menu tries to make it sound a lot more complicated than that, but that’s all it really is. This is, apparently, the one thing in a restaurant that she can so definitively want that it took her thirty seconds for a decision that usually takes forever.

“You  _ do _ know what shaved ice is, right?”

“Duh? It’s ice that’s shaved, Nanami. Explains itself.”

“It’s also not real food, Utena.” You have a sneaking suspicion why she wants this so much, but she hasn’t eaten all day, and flavored ice isn’t exactly going to count as a lunch substitute. “We’re supposed to be getting a meal.”

“It’s good, though!” She quickly swipes back up to the other, not-dessert foods on the menu. “See? There’s other stuff here, you can get other stuff.”

“ _ We _ can get other stuff.” You try your second attempt at a stern enough voice to sound serious. “You need to get actual nutrients into you. You’re getting something else, got it?”

Oh no, she’s getting that sad puppy-pout on her face.

…

“You can get the shaved ice if you order something else from here.” God, you’re way too easy.

“Yesssss!” She picks the cheapest thing she’s willing to eat on the menu along with the ice, and hands the phone back. At least this place has some stuff you’d actually want; you quickly get some fish and chips and finish ordering.

Why is it so easy to make you change your mind, anyways? You guess there’s some fear that you’ll hurt someone because you had no awareness of their feelings, like all those times you’d do that so long ago, so you just give in before a decision you want to be stubborn about ever gets to that point.

Isn’t that better, though? If you just be more tolerable to what other people want? Maybe it’s not if it’s something that you’d know would hurt you, but, like, you don’t think giving into shaved ice or whatever is going to do much harm. Maybe you should try and be more aware of this sort of thing when a more serious problem comes up–

“Doing that thing that you did this morning?”

“Mhm.” You probably look like a zombie when this happens, but whatever. “I dunno, I’m just thinking about past stuff.”

“Ah.” Now that she has nothing to put off through stretching, she’s leaning back on the porch door. “How do you do that stuff so easily, anyways? Thinking about back then is…”

“It sucks, yeah.” You slump back right beside her, tired as you are. “But, like, I sucked back then, too, right? I should try to learn from that.”

“I suppose.” She’s staring off into the distance, and making what you’d presume to be the same reflecting-type face you were making. “I’unno. Any time I try to do that, everything just hurts.”

“Hey, you don’t need to right now.” You put your arm around her. “This stuff’s draining, you’ve already done way too much today as it is.”

“That’s… fair, yeah.” She’s still staring.

“Hey, c’mon, cut that out.” You wave your hand in front of her, and she shocks herself back into reality in response. “If I shouldn’t be doing that, neither are you.”

“R-right.”

She’s shaking again.

“Alright, that’s enough overthinking for you today.” You hold onto her, and get her to stop looking out into the sky. “Anything that’d help you calm down?”

“I dunno?” She glances down behind you.

“Hmmmm.” When she’s like this, there’s usually this one thing that always helps her out. “You want me to set up the sleeping bags?”

“No!” She blurts it out so obviously without thinking that she regrets it within seconds. “Okay, I mean, not ‘no’, but…”

“So a maybe.”

“I–okay, not a ‘maybe’, either.” She’s getting embarrassed over it, the goofball. “I mean, it’d be nice! But you don’t have to do that if that’s not–”

“Okay, I’ll go set it up now.” You can comfortably say she’s confirmed wanting it, might as well skip the rest of her worries. “Just gimme a sec, alright?”

 

####  **iv.**

The set-up that Utena asked for is one you’re very well-acquainted with, and it doesn’t take you particularly long to make it all fit together, though this one doesn't exactly come with the proper kind of bedding she’s probably more wanting it to be like.

Two bed-like areas, pointing in opposite directions, positioned in such a manner that there’s a spot in between them to hold hands, large open window on one side to see the night sky with. Even in the shelter, where you’re never supposed to move the beds, you’d always just quietly move the beds once all the workers were out, and then you’d wake up early to move them back into place when they came back.

Just to add the cherry on top, you fold up one of the new towels in the center, a pillow for your hands to hold on. With that, your sleeping arrangements–Utena’s sleeping arrangements, more importantly–are complete.

“Okay, but this really is kind of weird, though.” She’s unzipping her sleeping bag to lay on it, still kind of anxious about it. “Like, it’s only comfortable to me because, like…”

“Because it was how you slept during your most comfortable moments with the girl you were in love with but didn’t realize until it was too late?”

“Y-yeah?” She is now hiding her face in the bag out of embarrassment. “That’s weird, though! It’s weird that I ask you to do that!”

“We’re two weird people who’ve lived weird lives, Utena.” You’ve plopped yourself similarly onto your bag, and you hold your hand out. “Take the small comforts when you can.”

“Bleeeh.” She immediately clings right onto your hand. “Shouldn’t I be comfortable about all of this, though? Like, we’re in a city that accepts us, I already met new friends and everything.”

“Utena, trauma doesn’t just magically go away just because–wait, friends?”

“Yeah, just from when we were out today.” She lazily drags her messenger bag from behind her and scrounges inside. “Like, they gave me their numbers and stuff to text them with.”

“…Their numbers.”

“Yup.” She dumps out what seems like dozens of paper scraps onto the floor. “I dunno, a lot of them were really nice to me.”

She… she knows why they’re doing that, right?

“You do realize that they’re not doing that to be friends?”

“They aren’t?” She glances down at them with a bit of worry. “Oh. Were they just messing with me?”

This absolutely useless lesbian.

“It’s not a bad thing, trust me.” The old you would be teasing her to death over this, but as much as the new you feels similarly, you’d rather not make her even more worried. “Remind me to explain tomorrow?”

“Alright, yeah.” Her eyes still stick to the papers for a moment, but eventually goes back to you. “I’unno, having friends just sounds nice, right now.”

“That makes sense.” You get her to move the bag back so she can lay back down in position. “We need new people to be around that isn’t just each other, after all.”

“I-I guess.”

There’s a long silence. You’re pretty sure she’s thinking about something, but it doesn’t seem to be the kind you associate with bad traumatic memories; she’s responding to any gesture immediately, no staring off into space or anything, just a comfortable reflection. You leave her be, opting to just stroke her hand every once in a while.

She seems to have calmed down, at least. She can keep her eyes closed without immediately cracking them back open out of fear, and when you gently smile at her, you’re met with her old smile, the genuine, optimistic one that’s as bright as you remembered it.

If nothing else, you’re thankful you can help her like this. It’s the least you can do.

“Hey, um, Nanami.” Utena breaks the silence for a moment, as her fingers clutch against yours. “Can I ask a kinda weird question?”

“Sure?”

“D-do w-we…” She’s having trouble saying it, so you patiently wait for her to compose herself. “count… as friends?”

“Obviously? Of course we do.”

“No, I mean, like…” She seems really scared to clarify, but does so eventually. “I’unno, like friend-friends.”

…Friend-friends? What is she talking about?

She means if you’re both more than acquaintances, right? She’s not, like, asking about something bigger than that? She doesn’t even know about the literally dozens of people who were trying to hit on her, there’s no way she thinks enough about that stuff to ask. Actually, no, what are you saying, it’s Utena, if she was in love with someone she would definitely say it as awkward as–

Wait. Wait wait wait wait wait, hang on one second.

_ Did Utena just confess to me? _

Her face immediately turns into a bright red.

“No!” Oh whoops she definitely heard that. “I mean, yes! Maybe? I don’t know!”

“W-why are you asking?” You're pretty sure you're about as red-faced, too.

“Because I thought you’d know if we were!”

Wait, do you actually even know?

“Maybe?” You absolutely do not know in the slightest, for Christ’s sake. “I, okay, not  _ maybe _ , but not-not-maybe? Like, uh… I’ve never really actually known either?”

“Wait, hang on, if you don’t, that means–” This woman has transformed her entire face into a tomato with how red it is. “Wait, so what are we, then?”

“I mean, if I knew, I’d have a pretty good answer to–okay, hold on.” You’re the only one who can try to not overcomplicate things here, Nanami, Jesus Christ hold it together. “Just… let’s go back a step here. You didn’t just ask that because you didn’t know, right?”

“I mean, I’m just pretty sure nobody who’s ‘just friends’ do the stuff we do!” She’s clearly trying really hard not to immediately hide herself. “They don’t hold hands all the time, they don’t lay on each other’s laps and stuff, they definitely don’t recreate a bed that one of them used to do with the person they were in love with!”

“I dunno! Like I’m not good at knowing any of this, but I'm pretty sure friends are supposed to comfort one another!”

“ _ Not like this! _ ”

Oh jeez, she’s back to shaking.

“Utena–”

“This isn’t…” She’s starting to do the thing she always does where she just hides into the closest thing in front of her. “This isn’t what friends are supposed to do!”

“Utena, we’re fine, please don’t worry–”

“But people are gonna keep staring at us!” Unfortunately, the thing closest in front of her is you, and it’s really strange that she’s afraid of being too touchy-feely considering how her face is getting  _ way too close to your neck. _

“Utena, i-it’s fine, it’s okay–”

“No it isn’t!

She's breathing into it.

“This always happens to us, Nanami!”

She is breathing  _ VERY HEAVILY INTO IT,  _ oh god Nanami do something already!

“O-okay but can you just stop for a sec–”

Fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK–

“This always happens, they always do this when we–”

“ **_Utena_ ** **.** ”

…

Alright, you wanted to do something to stop that, and your spur-of-the-moment planning resulted in you kneeled over top of her, still faced in the opposite direction while looking down, with her eyes fixated directly up at you in shock.

A very, uh… submissive kind of shock in her eyes, actually. You have never felt something more devoid of a friend-like tension with her than right now.

Hm.

Well, you have her full attention now, at least, and you’re pretty sure you have a good idea  of what you should be telling her? So you’re either you’re about to prove her worries wrong, or prove them very, very right.

Here goes nothing.

“Okay, lemme ask you my own question to try and help you.” Finally, a time where the stern voice holds a good use. “How many times did we get that weird look today?”

“I mean…” She’s definitely certain there was one, but she sure is straining to find an example. “Okay, I didn’t  _ see _ anyone, but that doesn’t mean–”

“So you didn’t notice anyone wanting to judge us?”

“Actually, um, I don’t think you were paying much attention, but someone did try to compliment us while we were going downtown.”

“Utena, that doesn’t count here, and you know it.” You have a point here, time to reel it in. “You remember the kind of people who used to give us those looks, right?”

“I dunno?” She clearly just wants to say ‘anybody’, but she’s at least humoring you by considering it. “I guess old people?”

“Gross old people?”

“I mean, okay, they all kind of fit that brand of old straight men, yeah?”

“And what do you think their opinions on homosexuality look like?”

It takes a second, but she almost immediately eases her tension down to normal. You’re pretty sure it clicked, thank some kind of lord.

“Those kinds of people live by awful rules of how people should be doing things, Utena.” You shift to a more seiza-like position, kneeling right behind her so this stops feeling so weird. “We’re here to get away from those people, right? Give us some safety to be in public and not fear for ourselves.”

“Yeah, that… that makes sense, okay.” She breathes a sigh of relief, and there’s a brief moment of comfortable silence. You pat your lap, and she shifts right onto it, letting you pet at her hair.

Your name is Nanami Kiryuu, and you’re always terrified, more often than not. Not for anything in particular, but for anything  _ potentially _ harmful–the fear that anything you utilise, your words or otherwise, will be used to hurt others, like they used to be. There was once a time when doing this was scary to you, to have her trust you so much that she could just lay herself on top of you, eyes closed and mind resting, putting her entire comfort into your hands.

You’re trying to be better than that, though. That’s the best you can do, given your circumstances.

“Okay, I can explain that reaction, though?” She seems somewhat worried to ask permission for it, so you silently nod for her sake. “It was just, um, the person I mentioned earlier definitely thought we were dating? It was just worrying me a lot since.”

“They definitely could’ve gotten that idea, sure, but that’s okay.” You’re scritching behind her ears to keep her calmed down. For whatever reason, it seems to be really effective on her. “I don’t really know what we count as, either, but no matter what we end up being, this place is gonna be alright with it, okay?”

“O-okay.” She’s already rubbing back into your hand in response. God, she’s too cute.

This girl in front of you, the woman who’s managed to stay by your side this entire time, as you try and keep her calm as can be, is Utena Tenjou, the most honest, genuine, selfless woman you’ve ever met in your entire life. Once, she was trapped in the kind of world to take advantage of that.

Maybe, in this new world you’re in, it can be kinder to her in return.

“Wait, hold up, wasn’t there supposed to be takeout coming by–”

Knock on the door, right on cue. You both laugh at the timing of that, and she sits up so you can get the food, paying for the meal and thanking the deliveryman.

“Lucky you, they actually planned for someone to willingly get solidified flavored water delivered along with all this warm stuff and put it in another bag.”

“Shush!” She sticks her tongue out at you, and you can’t help but laugh. She still goes for the shaved ice first, naturally.

You don’t really know what you two are, if you’re just friends with an unbreakable bond, if you’re so deeply in love that you come off as a happily decades-married couple bickering and holding hands, or if it’s something strange and unique between those two things, something that can’t ever be explained with mere words, only in emotions and acts of affection.

“Hey, Utena, can I have the hand back for a sec?”

“You still worried about the mark?”

“Not really. I just, er, kinda want it?”

“Oh. I mean, I can eat this with one hand, so if you want–”

You cling to it immediately.

“Thank you.”

She looks perplexed. “For what?”

“I dunno.” You keep it close to your cheek, holding one of the few genuine smiles you’ve ever had. “For everything, I guess.”

“Pffft, you dork.” Her giggle is as warm as it can be in response. “…Same goes to you, though.”

You care about her, more than you’ve cared about anyone before in your entire life. Maybe you have some equivalent to “love” for her, something as real and as powerful but different in how it acts, who knows, but what matters most is that it’s there–and, as strange as it might sound to the anxiety in the back of your head, who still tries to push forward with confusion to why she’d ever want to even come near you, she has that same feeling for you, too.

You’ve both done well. More importantly, you’ve done it all together. What that “together” is now, whatever that together might end up being in the future, you’ll never trade for the world.

**Author's Note:**

> i was supposed to post this like two months ago but that required going to my not-laptop-computer and i'm lazy trash, WHOOOOOOPS
> 
> anyways this is one of my favorite fics i've written! it's one of the only ones i've made that doesn't revolve around some kind of HTML trick (which is nice because it means i'm not just a pile of gimmicks) and i got to explore something other than trauma with it for a change ~~even if i'm still really embarrassed that i was the first full fic in the zine~~


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